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It was too much and too little at the same time. There was no settling "in between", no medium. It was exhilarating and it left him wanting more; but he knew he wouldn't be able to seize any more opportunities because there simply would be none to come.
All the thoughts whizzed into Dylan's mind, intruding his previously serene thoughts, and refusing to free him of their dreadful grasp. He was drowning, drowning in the ''what if's'' and the wishful thinking and also the insecurities and the doubts, and there was nobody to save him.
Having spent a chunk of his life in the acting career, he had loads of practice on hiding his actual feelings; so when Kaya and Ki Hong approached him, eyes brimming with joyous tears and lips stretched into wide, almost maniacal, grins he greeted them with a laugh. Maybe it was a pitch higher than his real one but they seemed too busy caught up with how hilarious the whole scenario had been. It wasn't that funny, not to Dylan at least. To Dylan it was horrific; horrific but pleasing at the same time.
Just a few seconds ago, Dylan and Thomas, the blonde Brit on the set, had decided to pull off the little 'prank' they schemed together. Originally they planned to share a platonic kiss, while the cameras were rolling, instead of delivering the lines their characters had been assigned. Half-way into the process of leaning in, however, Dylan yanked himself backwards, a nervous laugh following to keep his pride at bay.
Why did he do so, you ask? It wasn't because he didn't want to kiss Thomas, it was quite the opposite actually. It seemed too real to him; the way their eyes almost fluttered shut, the nearly quiet background, the dimness of the set, save for the artificial auburn hue, the flickering of their gazes from the others eyes to their lips, felt too real. The thing that really made his heart practically leap out of the confines of his chest was the heat creeping up his neck, threatening to hit the apples of his cheeks if he didn't let the distance between them grow again. He had wanted to kiss Thomas, and he knew it. The dryness of his throat and his palpitating hands weren't foreign experiences to him. He'd been in the almost exact same position back in middle school when the virginity of his lips had been stolen by a ginger hair colored girl, freckles cutely dotting her cheeks, and emerald eyes that bore into him in the most beautiful way. This was, safe to say, the first time he'd felt this way with a man; and out of all people, it just had to be one of his best friends.
It had started off okay, his eyes were mostly trained on the male's jaw, thinking that if he glanced up, he would burst out laughing. However, the temptation got to him and he just had to look up, he just had to know how bad Thomas was trying to hold back his own laughter too; but when he glanced up he was met with hazel eyes locked within crescent shaped eyelids, a quirky smirk on a thin pair of pale lips, and a whole load of butterflies dosed with sugar. Dylan's next breath was more like a sharp, inaudible gasp, and the smile he was trying to bite back was no longer there. Instead, his tongue was about to roll past his lips, a nervous habit of his, when his infamous laugh escaped him. His hand came up, covering his mouth, and he reluctantly tore his pair of onyx colored irises away from the countenance he'd already begun to miss. Thomas, as far as his peripheral vision told him, had thrown him a quizzical look but shared his laugh and left to chat away with Dave, their director who'd allowed them a quick break.
So here he was, his back pressed against the same log, Kaya and Ki Hong singing the childish tune of two people sitting in some tree, and his gaze focused on them even though his attention was elsewhere. It took 3, maybe 7, snaps to get him to actually notice Will's presence. The male was crouching in front of him, sharing a grin with everyone else in studio, "You alright there, mate? Feeling upset you couldn't land your lips on Gangster's?" Will elicited a teasing chuckle afterwards at his comment and his nickname for their friend, sitting beside Dylan, much to the latter's discomfort. He liked the boy, they were good friends, but he would rather have the other British male actor sit beside him, right now.
Wait, what?
"It was just a joke," Dylan answers, a lazy, lopsided smile still managing to grace his facial features. His response wasn't necessarily a lie. Yes, it had been a joke, and probably just was a joke for everyone besides him.
"Right, yeah, whatever you say buddy," comes Will's quick reply, a playful scoff leading his statement. "It looked like you wanted to devour one another. Well, that's always the case, but today it was more.. intense," Will explains, fingers playing with the sides of his water bottle, causing distracting noises that rivaled Kaya's high pitch giggling. "We were just goofi- what do you mean 'always'? It was a one time thing," Dylan argues, denial too thick to be dismissed but too weak to be accepted. He, himself, could here the uncertainty lacing into, and dominating, his tone.
"Oh please, don't give us that. You two have been at this for days, weeks, months even. I'm surprised it took you this long to figure it out," Kaya interrupts just as Will is about to get his first word out. She's, of course, accompanied by Ki Hong, who shares his own thoughts right after, "Exactly. I'm sure Thomas figured your thirst for each other a while ago. He's a smart nugget." The Asian allowed himself to lay in front of Dylan and Will, his arms locked behind his head and his face turned in the former's direction. Kaya sat on the other side of Dylan, slinging an arm around his broad shoulders as she couldn't help but let out another giggle.
"Oh yeah, he knows alright," she says, subtly nudging her head to their right. Dylan, eyebrows furrowing from confusion, lets his line of sight shift from her phizog and towards the direction she'd indicated. It takes him a few seconds to figure out exactly what she wanted him to take note of. Ah, yes. Thomas was making his way over to them, a smile replacing his usual, endearing frown. Did he always look so adorable while walking, practically skipping, to them? Was his hair always so soft looking, so inviting to fingers, Dylan's fingers to be exact? Had it been the case all the time that faint singing of the choir could be heard in the background when Thomas appeared? Okay maybe that was pushing it. Still, Dylan was left wondering.
"Can we let this topic drop?" He manged to quickly huff out, a second before it would have been too late. "Hey, Thomas," he greets, a polite smile helping his case. "Hey, Dylan. What's with the sickeningly sweet smile?" Alright, maybe it didn't help his case. "Dylan's been having a crisis about his love life," Ki Hong answers before Dylan can defend himself. The former male receives a glare from the latter who receives a look from Thomas. The 'look' is somewhere between playful and puzzled. He can't tell if it's adorable or if it's going to end him; he later decides it's both. "Love life, huh. You finally fancy someone?" Thomas asks, eyebrows raising upwards to display his interest in the subject. Dylan's first thoughts are something along the lines of: Kaya, Ki Hong, and Will had been lying to him. He and Thomas are simply friends, and if he now felt this way, he'd have to accept the fact that Thomas 100% didn't share it.
Then he catches the way Thomas's lips lift on the left corner, the same area the boy was currently letting his teeth nip at, and how he looks shy when bringing up his next question, "Who is it, mate?" There was no way anyone would display such emotions when asking about a person's potential lover if they didn't harbor some sort of feelings towards the person, right?
Dylan's throat has gone dry again, his tongue peeks out to run along his lips once, twice, maybe even thrice. "Uh," he starts of intellectually, too busy staring at the Brit in front of him to continue his sentence. That is, until Kaya jabs him in the side, reminding him that others are still around and that he has yet to reply to two of Thomas's questions; he's reluctant to answer, though, since Thomas seems to already know the answers and the rest of their friends are scaring him with their presence.
"Right, um," as bright as ever, Dylan mentally notes, before he's once again trying to reply, "It's a person." Great.
"You don't say?" He doesn't even have to turn his face to see Will's sarcastic expression, having seen it one too many times before. "Maybe we should give them some space. Dylie here," a hand ruffles his hair, "won't bloody do anything if we're breathing down his neck."
With that Will's up and waiting for Ki Hong and Kaya to follow him a safe distance from the remaining two. Once they're gone, or well, hiding behind the big camera equipment a good few feet in front of them, Thomas sits down in front of Dylan. "So," he begins and Dylan is already longing to hear what more Thomas has to say in that angelic voice of his. "Your 'crush'?" Thomas is too close for a friendly distance, Dylan thinks, but honestly he didn't care. It was, to him, still too big of a gap.
"I think you already know," comes Dylan's witty response, a characteristic smirk on his face as he tries to will his cheeks not to give in to an embarrassing flush. "I don't think I do," Thomas is leaning closer now, just slightly, but Dylan espies it. "Enlighten me."
And so Dylan does.
His arm, that's been itching to just curl around Thomas's petite waist for the past half an hour, finally gets to do so. The space between them is almost non existent as he draws his definition of beauty to him, foreheads bumping in a clumsy, but expected, way, before his lips graze over another pair. The first brief meeting is innocent, but it peels off the last layer of self control Dylan has on. He angles his head to the side and nudges himself forward, indulging in the sweetness that is Thomas Brodie-Sangster; and as he had known from the start, kissing Thomas is, just like everything else about the boy, perfect.